Teachers, board not close to negotiating in Wyoming Area

Wyoming Area teachers picket outside the Montgomery Avenue elementary school in West Pittston on Monday afternoon. Teachers have been on strike since Sept. 3.

The teachers strike in the Wyoming Area School District is now in its third week, and the war of words is heating up.

The school board wants "to force the district to ride this out and not have classes resume until" Oct. 4, and the board's "refusal to negotiate will no doubt result in a second lengthy teachers' strike in the spring of 2014," the teachers union said in fliers passed out at the Wyoming Area High School football game on Friday.

The information from the flier is posted in the union's website. It lists the phone numbers of board members and urges calls board members to demand a settlement.

"The time to stop having your life disrupted is now," the union said.

"The board didn't tell them to go on strike," school board President John Bolin replied Monday.

John Holland, regional field director for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, said the board "forced them" to strike.

"There's a difference," Holland said. "When you have ridiculous offers, and after four years, what else can you expect?"

Union and district negotiators have been unable to agree to terms on a new compensation package since the teachers' last collective bargaining agreement expired Aug. 31, 2010. Attorney Jack Dean, the school district's chief negotiator, disputed the union claim that district has refused to meet.

"Nothing is stopping them from coming to school tomorrow," Dean added.

"They don't have a contract, and that's stopping them coming to school," Holland replied. "Give me a contract, and I will have them back."

Dean said he has "received zero calls" from Holland to schedule a bargaining session since the strike began Sept. 3. The school board meets tonight for the first time since the strike began Sept. 3, and Bolin said the union is "getting wind that the taxpayers are getting upset."

State law allows teachers to strike twice in one school year, and a first strike must end when 180 days of school cannot be completed by June 15. This current strike must end Oct. 4.

The average teacher salary was $52,239 last year in the Wyoming Area School District, according the state Department of Education. Current salaries are based on the 2009-10 pay scale from the last collective bargaining agreement.

The pay scale has 16 steps, and each step has 16 columns based on graduate school credits. Under the last agreement, a teacher would advance a step each year until reaching the top step, and salary amounts at the top step increased each year, from 2003-04 to 2009-10.

District negotiators last month stopped insisting teachers must pay a premium share to get health insurance, hoping that would entice the union to accepts an offer on wages. The district offered to increase pay 12.5 percent over five years, including retroactive pay increases for 2011-12 and 2012-13, Dean said.

Those offers, made before the strike, were just "a shell game" and involved attempts "to shuffle cards," Holland said.

"They show up, and they don't really do anything," Holland added.

Last week, two school boards in Luzerne County - the Wilkes-Barre Area School and the Greater Nanticoke Area School Board - approved new collective bargaining agreements for teachers. Last year's average teacher salary was $56,832 in the Greater Nanticoke Area and $63,501 in the Wilkes-Barre Area.

mbuffer@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2073

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